The Tax Collectors: 500 years and counting ....

In the 1520s, the Venetian art chronicler Marc'Antonio Michiel toured a private collection in Milan where he paused in admiration before a striking painting of two men engaged in accounting matters. Michiel attributed the painting to "John Eyck, Memline, I believe, a Flemish painter, in the year 1440." Michiel's record provides the first account of the pictorial genre that has come to be known as "The Tax Collectors." The location of the painting Michiel saw and its attribution to one of the great masters of Northern European painting cannot be verified. However, what is certain is that this subject gained remarkable popularity in the early 16th centuries in the Low Countries. Over twenty versions of the Tax Collectors have survived to the present day, including the painting at the heart of this exhibit. The artists who created these variants include Quentin Messys (d. 1533, Antwerp), Marinus van Reymerswale (d. 1546, Zeeland), and centuries of followers who worked and trained in the Low Countries. Thanks to the generosity of a private collector in Silicon Valley, Santa Clara University students enrolled in the Winter 2025 Art History Capstone have been given the opportunity to research this painting and develop this exhibition. Every aspect of this exhibition is the result of their collaborative and curatorial efforts. To fully understand the painting, and to better recreate a traditional Renaissance study, they have read widely on a range of topics relating to Northern European visual culture, economics, and collecting practices. The essays which appear in this catalogue expand upon the materials available at the exhibition through contextual and interpretative analysis.